GTM Logistics

is bringing everything I own in Britain out of storage and over to Berlin. This means I shall soon have a couple of hundred copies of John ...

play up play up

Mogwai is cutting down the time he spends playing World of Warcraft. Twenty hours a week or less now, compared to a peak of over 70. It'...

too soon it is too soon

There’s a reluctance to accept Kelman for what he is, a perfectionist and a radical Modernist writer of exceptional brilliance, and this rel...

by popular demand

Readers who have seen the online YNH forum have been asking whether it is possible to buy a copy of Your Name Here in PDF. Your Name Here cu...

your talk here

Neil Gorman has set up a Ning forum for readers who would like to discuss Your Name Here. The link is here .

the catcher in the s-bahn

Took the S5 out to Frederdorf to ride my bike to Strausberg, using a map that had been sold as a bike map. A few boys who looked about 9 yea...

Kapitalismus, Kommunismus, Klutter

Came across an interview of Peter Walsh, a clear-clutter guru, on Galleycat . He talks about people with too many books, there are people w...

we want umlauts

Bewteen games ish hab gefragt: "Woher kommst du eigentlich?" "Ish? Ish bin Türker. Komm' aus Istanbul. Dub bis Amerikaner...

Berlin for Paris apartment swap

I'd like to swap my apartment in Berlin for one in Paris for July and August, or July OR August. I've posted a description of the ap...

the rise and fall of the genitive case

On Bremer Sprachblog , Anatol Stefanowitsch has an interesting post on the aspects of language that interest scholars, in particular the way...

FBI tackles language exam cheats

FBI visits Cambridge University to discuss beating language exam cheats 7 April 2008 An FBI specialist is to address European languag...

plots

Kevin Connolly has very kindly sent me a new improved plot of the gender mnemonics data using Excel 2007 which really is awfully nice.

would they had blotted a thousand...

Barbara and I eventually reconciled ourselves to the fact that in buying our tickets we had sent about $20 to a place from which it would ne...

Gute Bücher

Walked toward Mehringdamm planning to buy plastic sandals. Stopped by the new used book store, Gute Bücher, in what used to be the Thai gro...

Best excuse ever

My dear friend Rafe Donahue has sent many helpful suggestions with regard to ggplot2. He comments: Don't think of the ± of 0.2 to each o...

losing the plot

In the previous post I mentioned the results of a couple of tests on memorisation of articles in a language class. A reader pointed out that...

Winnie der Pooh

I went to a 2-hour Artikelkurs at Hartnackschule toward the end of April. As it turned out, the course was not really about articles at all,...

Garamond

Garamond fonts are nearly as plentiful as mosquitoes in August. There’s a version from International Typeface Corporation (ITC)® , a version...

year of languages

UNESCO has decided 2008 is the Year of Languages. I called my stepmother earlier this afternoon. I had sent her an e-mail expressing regret...

pin factories and such

Via Marginal Revolution, came to a post by Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics on specialisation -- linked, on the one hand, to our failure to s...

Zimerman

I’m incredibly egoistic in a concert hall. I really want to experience the pieces.” In order to achieve this, Zimerman explains, he has a si...

SP

What Prokofiev did have was an extremely dry wit, which occasionally results in some fine, bitchy one-liners, from his disdain for Mahler...

rererereremembering

SuperMemo is a program that keeps track of discrete bits of information you've learned and want to retain. For example, say you're s...

Pause

"Thinking back to my own life, I also hadn't forgotten my own experiences as a conscientious objector 10 years earlier. I had two t...

wotthehell wotthehell

For those who missed it first time round, "Cormac McCarthy and the Semi-Colon" has just been republished by Art Nouveau magazine w...

Socratic wisdom

Ben Goldacre at Bad Science draws attention to a paper on being too incompetent to assess your own incompetence: Unskilled and Unaware of It...